Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best fr
om Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Fitzwilliam “Pride” Darcy, hunter and shaker-downer of skeevy statutory rapists, and Peeta “I Like Frosting” Mellark, two-time Hunger Games survivor, mentally unstable torture victim, and baker extraordinaire! They’re nice guys with burning crushes…but who will scorch whom?
In their corners:
Darcy may LOOK like a nice man, but don’t get him wrong: he’s got a temper, a sword, and probably a dueling pistol or two. See how he barged in on Wickham and bent him to his will? YEAH. And as Mrs. Fitzpatrick put it, “there’s also his superpower of freezing disdain.” It’s gotta be the de Bourgh blood, right?
Peeta’s young, but he’s been through a lot and picked up a few skills along the way—he’s strong, he’s loyal, he knows how to hide, and late-night hosts everywhere dig him. Hey, (spoiler alert) he LIVED and he got the girl, didn’t he? Gotta give the boy props for that. He also pipes a mean flower.
Handicaps:
Darcy’s only handicap may be his generally impeccable sense of reserve (saying rude things aloud at parties notwithstanding): he could kick your tail, but would he? Would he really?
Peeta…well. When Peeta’s on, he’s ON. When Peeta’s not on, he’s…kind of a moron. He’s noisy in the forest! He would totally have eaten those lethal berries! Really, he’d rather hide in the mud for like two weeks than experience your aggro. Let’s be honest.
Decision:
Darcy, hands down—he’s got the temper and the gun. Quick, Peeta, paint yourself onto a tree!
Anybody willing to take odds on calling off the fight and having a cup of tea, however, might also be handsomely rewarded.
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Elizabeth “Fine Eyes” Bennet, who’s spunky and sparky and holds a grudge like nobody’s business, and Katniss “I’m Super Scary” Everdeen, who will shoot you in the heart. Literally. THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR, PEOPLE.
In their corners:
Lizzy’s a smart cookie with a dirty hem, a healthy cardiovascular system (who knew Jane was so into running?), and, for all we know, a collection of survival books at the ready. Some say she battles the undead, but that’s ridiculous.
Katniss is an accidental teenage revolutionary who caused, directly or indirectly, the violent demises of a number of her competitors during a life-or-death gladiatorial reality show, then brought the oppressive government of her people to its knees. So there’s that.
Handicaps:
Lizzy may have a sharp tongue, but that’s about it. Maybe she could sic her mother on Katniss, if Mrs. Bennet stopped talking long enough to hear her? Otherwise, she’ll have to make a run for it, and whatever shoes she has are likely not Capitol-approved.
Katniss has a keen sense of guilt and an occasional tendency to make poor decisions; if Lizzy can make her do something stupid (probably by posing as an authority figure), then make her feel super bad about it, she might have a chance.
Decision:
You guys, it’s a fight. What’s Lizzy going to do, fend danger off with an embroidery needle? Miss “Arrow in the eye” wins it. She’s probably pretty haunted about it, though, if it makes you feel any better.
Next week: Fitzwilliam “The Gentleman” Darcy goes to the mats against Peeta “Frosting Stud” Mellark! Only on an Austen blog near you!
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Lady Catherine “You’re in MY House Now” de Bourgh, patroness to Mr. Collins and owner of many a fine staircase, and Violet “We Can’t Have Him Assassinated…I Suppose,” the Dowager Countess of Grantham, matriarch of matriarchs and subject of many a Youtube mashup. Both get whatever they want! Both enjoy lording it over their inferiors—i.e., everybody! When they put up their dukes, whose pride will prevail?
In their corners:
The Dowager Countess of Grantham has a big-ass house, a large and accommodating family, and a stare that would melt steel. She’s Maggie Smith. She wears excellent hats and says whatever she wants, and the Internet loves her for it. She always wins the flower show…if you know what we mean.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh also has a big-ass house, plus a dreamy nephew. She hosts a mean dinner party. She says whatever she wants, and nobody says otherwise. She does whatever it takes to get what she wants.
Handicaps:
The Dowager Countess has a granddaughter who killed a Turk with her lady parts, the constant glare of electricity burning her delicate eyes, and a bunch of random, sick commoners sleeping on cots in her parlor. It’s rather too much to bear, one thinks!
Lady Catherine? Two words: MR. COLLINS.
Decision:
This is bound to be a down-and-dirty brawl, but the Dowager Countess takes it all: the crazy but compelling family, the edgy sense of humor, and the Internet obsession. This, of course, indicates an inevitable rematch, because Lady Catherine does NOT take this business lying down. (She might, however, settle for marrying her sad, sickly daughter off to Matthew. Because THAT’s going to go over well.)
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from 
everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency-era medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Captain Frederick “Kindly Pirate” Wentworth, professional piner and warrior in the name of handsomeness, and The Doctor, time-traveling alien and occasional heartbreaker. Both have loved ‘em and left ‘em; which one’s worth chasing after?
In their corners:
Wentworth is a clear winner in the world of Austenian good guys: anyone worth pining after for eight perfectly good man-catching years (and by the generally sensible Anne Elliot, no less!) must be, ahem, spongeworthy. We’re told he’s handsome and adventurous, yet gentle and willing to wear his heart on his sleeve when it comes to his lady love; after all, he’s been waiting, too.
The Doctor is good, and wise, and full of adventure and a particular brand of romance; he’s been rather handsome lately, and he wears a variety of vintage suits with great skill and aplomb—and if you don’t like the Doctor you’ve got, you can just wait for the next one. He’s charming, and kind, and I think it’s safe to say that he’s a dude who’s capable of loving deeply. And…look. He DRIVES A SPACESHIP. THAT IS BIGGER ON THE INSIDE! And he travels through time and space, because why wouldn’t he? So…there’s that.
Handicaps:
Is it possible for a man to be too patient? Because Wentworth waited an awfully long time (admittedly at sea) before getting back on the horse, love-declaring-wise. We’re not saying it’s insensitive, just that a man’s gotta stake his claim, you know?
The Doctor…well. He is all of the things we said, and more—which is why such stellar young ladies continue to steal away with him—but he always leaves eventually, and he doesn’t come back. Even if by “leaves” I mean “gets caught on the wrong side of a closing dimensional portal and makes Miss Ball cry and cry and cry.” He keeps his beloved in his heart(s), but he doesn’t keep them in his sights, and that’s going to be a problem. Plus, you know, alien.
Decision:
It’s gotta be Wentworth. It’s hard out there for a guy without a phone-box spaceship, but Wentworth’s general faithfulness and ability to commit long-term without great emotional harm puts him over the edge. However, if he would like to try on a fancy pair of suspenders and a nice tweed-or-TARDIS blue suit, and perhaps a well-loved pair of Chuck Taylors, I believe the ladies of Austenacious would not object. Ahem.
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from 
Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency-era medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants:
Fitzwilliam “King of Hearts” Darcy, kind-hearted curmudgeon and romantic hero extraordinaire, and “Actual” King George VI, recovering stammerer and…well, king! One rules the Austen-industrial complex and the other just rules, and today, only one will walk away with his face and his reputation intact!
In their corners:
Mr. Darcy is loyal, devoted, and puts his money where his mouth is. He’s romantic. He likes the low-maintenance type and recognizes the virtues of a pair of fine eyes and a dirty hem. He’s nice to his baby sister and takes care of his goofy best friend, for better or worse, and he keeps a sweet bachelor pad. And let’s not forget the way he takes those afternoon swims!
George VI is, um, an actual crown-wearing, scepter-carrying monarch? He takes care of royal business, including a little kerfuffle called World War II, when his weenie brother gives up the throne for a girl. He’s a looker and he gets to wear those fancy military outfits, being both Commander-in-Chief and an actual Great War sailor. And he might finally get Colin Firth that Oscar, which surely nets him a point or two?
Handicaps:
Darcy, while handsome and devoted, can be—how do we put this?—a bit…awkward. With some people. Like, maybe all of them? He doesn’t keep his voice down when he’s saying something rude; he doesn’t dance at parties when he knows there are ladies without partners; he makes proposals that sound an awful lot like “I must be a moron, but let’s get married!” Charming.
George—don’t suppose they’d let us call him Bertie—is, it turns out, kind of a mess. There’s the speech issue, of course, but then also an entire early life of being picked last for probably everything (knee braces, forced right-handedness, chronic stomach problems, and a reputation for being “easily frightened and prone to tears”), plus major moves towards the dissolution of the British Empire under his reign. Whoops?
Decision:
Darcy. He may not be literally royal, but he reigns in our hearts…and he doesn’t come with an awesome wife played by a surprisingly normal Helena Bonham Carter. I think that means a lot to all of us.
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from…well, everywhere else…duke it out for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and some quality Regency-era medical care!
Today’s contestants:
Caroline “Look at her mother” Bingley of Pride and Prejudice takes on Nellie “Doll-Snatcher” Oleson, villainess extraordinaire of the Little House books! Will Caroline’s sugar-coated machinations be any match for Nellie’s direct-violence methods? Yes, the Mean Girls’ Match is on!
In their corners:
Caroline lists her favorite hobbies as taking turns about the room, crafting subtle barbs to wound her dear friends, and, oh yes, completely ruining their lives. All with a smile, you know. She won’t let you live anything down, from your dirty socks to your mistaken moments of honesty (“fine eyes” indeed, Mr. Darcy!), and she’ll stab you in the back every time.
Nellie likes to pull your hair, snatch her dolls out of your hands, and make fun of your mother. In round 2, she tries everything she can to get you kicked out of school and to catch and keep all the available men, especially ones called Almanzo.
Handicaps:
Caroline actually acted out of kindness once. Yes, she did—she tried to tell Lizzie that Mr. Wickham wasn’t quite the golden boy Lizzie thought he was. However, she did it so offensively that no harm was done, and Lizzie liked Mr. Wickham better than ever!
Nellie let Laura back her into a pond and get leeches all over her. She even cried about it, seriously losing face. How can you take a villainess seriously after that?
Decision:
Ding ding ding! It’s Miss Bingley, without a fight! She runs rings around Nellie Oleson, all while keeping her pants dry and her wit intact. Nellie tries, but none of her schemes work for long—Laura sees through her every time, and scares her silly with leeches, horses, or whatever’s there. It takes almost the whole book for Caroline’s plot to unravel. She’s got Jane, her brother, and Mr. Darcy sown up so tight that only the blundering of Lady Catherine can set them free. And, mind you, that happens when Lizzie and Mr. Darcy are at Rosings, where the Mistress of Manipulation can’t keep an eye on them. Nope, in the Mean Girl Stakes, it’s Miss Bingley for the win!
For those of you who haven’t already seen it, some LA Mormon girls have made a hilarious and so far fake trailer for Jane Austen’s Fight Club.
Now this is deeply satisfying; I don’t deny it. Everyone wants to see proper young ladies kick ass. Time period is not important, but the more proper, the more ass they obviously have to kick. (See: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, obviously Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Kill Bill – does she count as proper? – and so on and so on.) I’m tempted, naturally, to make a list of other movies Jane Austen could be inserted into, for copyright-ambiguous fun and profit. The Matrix: Jane Austen Reloaded springs to mind.
What about Little Miss Sunshine Bennet? In this quirky romp, the Bennet family drives their falling-apart carriage from Hertfordshire all the way to London just so Mary can compete in a talent competition. Lydia isn’t talking because she wants to join the military [wink wink nudge nudge], and Mr. Collins dies en route, the dirty old man. I think it should do well.
Or, in Eleanor and Marianne’s Excellent Adventure, the two bodacious sisters set out on a time-traveling quest to find sweet rhyme and pure reason, which will save the future universe from annihilation by evil spamlords. Along the way, they pick up a fun set of characters, including Lady Gaga, Stephen Hawking, and Stephen Colbert, all of whom embarrass them immensely. Quite by accident, they do find true love and happiness. Barack Obama advises a gathering at Sir John Middleton’s to be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!
All of this is very jolly, but I would just like to point something out here. Readers, has or has not Austenacious had a Jane Austen Fight Club column for almost a year now?! Are we owed royalties on this video? Our legal team better get busy!
In the meantime, perhaps our loyal readers could make trailers for our other columns. What Would Jane Do? is clearly a sickeningly sweet romance in which a cynical advice columnist is saved by a long-lost love (probably by falling down a hill). Jane Austen Hates You is probably an indie comedy, possibly about YouTube, MySpace, and all them there Social Networking Sites, hopefully starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Ask Mrs. Fitzpatrick sounds like an Agatha Christie to me, and Quote Unquote is clearly the new Bond movie.
Readers, are you game? What other movies mesh well with Austen novels? Or mesh so terribly badly they just have to go?
P.S. Jane Austen’s Army of Darkness! Just saying. . .
To anybody who’s ever said to an English major, “Do you want fries with that?” and then laughed like you made it up on the spot, we at Austenacious have a message for you. Have you not seen the Jane Austen Fight Club? Sure, we may actually be working in fast-food restaurants, but social scientists, in particular, should know: we are lit nerds, and we are coming for you.
You see, professor Michael Chwe of UCLA is presenting his paper “Jane Austen and the Prehistory of Game Theory” this Friday, April 23. Apparently Jane, as the supergenius we all know her to have been, exemplified the ins and outs of Game Theory in her novels—nearly 150 years before Game Theory was even invented.
REPRESENT.
Get this: “Austen’s novels do not simply provide interesting “case material” for the game theorist to analyze, but are themselves very ambitious and wide-ranging theoretically, providing insights not yet superseded by modern social science.” Jane, it seems, acts like a rational choice theorist, prioritizing social strategy and beneficial partnerships while simultaneously acknowledging the volatility of social relations: essentially, the heroines of the Austen canon strive to make wise choices, in the academic, social-scientific sense of the word, all while navigating the changeable social seas of rural Regency England.
Excellent, minions! What discipline shall we invade next? Shall we begin with “Theories of Meteorology in Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility” or with “Precursors to the Martha Graham Dance Company as Seen in Jane Austen’s Emma“? “Athleticism and the Great American Pastime in Persuasion,” or “Jane Austen: General Patton in a Dress”? The opportunities for academic evangelism/imperialism are endless! Regency gowns for all!
Ah, Jane. Changing the world, one free lunchtime lecture at a time.
Dear readers, don’t take this the wrong way, but we suspect that you are the kind of people who get your holiday shopping done early. No careless regifters or Christmas Eve night Rite Aid mavens here—your persistent thoughtfulness and industriousness leads us to believe that our readers routinely hoard awesome cards and salt away those perfect holiday gifts for the future. You probably label them and everything. Knowing you as we do, we don’t even believe that you forget what you bought and why, therefore ending up with a closet full of vaguely gifty crap at the end of the year!
Which is why, just in time for the ever-popular post-spring break shopping season, we have an important announcement to make.
The Austenacious store is open for business!
Here—the last tab on the right—you’ll find everything for the twenty-first-century Austen fan, from Disco Jane on a water bottle to the Jane Austen Fight Club for all your apparel needs. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Stay tuned—our appetite for silly Austen t-shirts is vast, and new stuff will arrive often.
After all, you know, Memorial Day is coming right up. We wouldn’t want you to fall behind.
Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from the non-Austen world (sometimes) match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and some quality Regency-era medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants:
Captain Frederick “I’m on a boat” Wentworth, naval hero and longtime piner after one Anne Elliot, and Mr. George “Yes, I am awesome, why do you ask?” Knightley! Both do right by their respective lady loves; both live somewhat in the shadow of Fitzwilliam Darcy; only one will walk away from this match with his face and his reputation intact!
In their corners:
Captain Wentworth is, well, on a boat. Actually, he’s in charge of the boat. He probably has a sword, possibly a gun, and for all we know, he’s thick as thieves with some tentacled beast/kraken/JAWS that he calls up from the deep in moments of stress. He’s also fiercely loyal, extraordinarily patient, and—we have it on good authority—the kind of guy who turns heads but doesn’t really own a mirror, if you know what we mean. Basically, he’s a kindly, romantic pirate. Best of all possible worlds!
Mr. Knightley likes moonlit strolls on warm evenings, doesn’t mind going out of his way to see his lady love, and has a fine air and—ahem—way of walking. He’s honest, affectionate, and filled with integrity, and he handles his slightly overbearing future father-in-law without breaking a sweat. He’s the kind of guy you’d want on your arm at all those neighborhood balls, for sure.
Handicaps:
Wentworth is, well, actually sort of a pirate. A legalized pirate, but a pirate. And if the Jack Sparrow lifestyle doesn’t read as a deterrent, exactly, try this: he was too proud to come back to Anne well beyond the Charlotte York “half as long as the relationship” rule, and then he “admitted the attentions of two young ladies at once”! Just imagine!
Knightley is rather disposed to being right. Constantly, obnoxiously right. Sigh.
Decision:
Captain Wentworth in a close but ultimately not-that-close competition. Knightley’s a contender, but seriously? VIRTUOUS PIRATE! Adventurer/keeper of flame wins every time! Nice try, George. Why don’t you, like, go take a walk or something?
